knew the conduct of his master had so well merited.
Nothing could be more awful and affecting than the solemnity of his
audience. A melancholy sorrow sat on every face: silence, as in the dead
of night, reigned through all the chambers of the royal apartment: the
courtiers and ladies, clad in deep mourning, were ranged on each side,
and allowed him to pass without affording him one salute or favorable
look, till he was admitted to the queen herself.[***]

* Davila, lib. v.

** Digges, p. 24[**?]

*** Carte, vol. iii. p. 522,

That princess received him with a more easy, if not a more gracious
countenance; and heard from Fenelon's Despatches, his apology, without
discovering any visible symptoms of indignation. She then told him, that
though, on the first rumor of this dreadful intelligence, she had been
astonished that so many brave men and loyal subjects, who rested secure
on the faith of their sovereign, should have been suddenly butchered
in so barbarous a manner, she had hitherto suspended her judgment, till
further and more certain information should be brought her: that
the account which he had given, even if founded on no mistake or bad
information, though it might alleviate, would by no means remove the
blame of the king's counsellors, or justify the strange irregularity of
their proceedings: that the same force which, without resistance, had
massacred so many defenceless men, could easily have secured their
persons, and have reserved them for a trial, and for punishment by a
legal sentence, which would have distinguished the innocent from the
guilty: that the admiral in particular, being dangerously wounded,
and environed by the guards of the king, on whose protection he seemed
entirely to rely, had no means of escape, and might surely, before his
death, have been convicted of the crimes imputed to him: that it was
more worthy of a sovereign to reserve in his own hands the sword of
justice, than to commit it to bloody murderers, who, being the declared
and mortal enemies of the persons accused, employed it without mercy and
without distinction: that if these sentiments were just, even supposing
the conspiracy of the Protestants to be real, how much more so if that
crime was a calumny of their enemies, invented for their destruction?
that if, upon inquiry, the innocence of these unhappy victims should
afterwards appear, it was the king's duty to turn his vengeance on their
defamers, who had t